In the mining, oil and gas industries, pipelines transport a variety of liquids, gases and slurries. The transport of certain raw materials, particularly in a water-based (or steam-based) slurry form, have been noted to be particularly damaging to pipes, causing wear through abrasion, corrosion, and/or erosion of the steel, sometimes referred to as “erosion-corrosion”.
The oil sands mining operations in Western Canada offer a potentially large supply of oil for North America and the rest of the world. The mined oil sands are typically carried by processing pipes to the extraction plant in the form of a water-based slurry. The extraction operation produces bitumen and a sand by-product referred to as tailings. These tailings are in slurry form and are highly abrasive, thus highly damaging to the processing pipes, also referred to as tailings pipes. These pipelines can be formed of many miles of steel piping that can vary from 8 to 80 inches in diameter and transport the tailings to the settling ponds.
A conventional method to address the damage caused by the oil sands slurry involves rotating the tailings pipe to even out the wear on the inner surface of the pipe. The rotation operation is very expensive and difficult. Even with this method, tailings pipes often need to be replaced after as little as a few months of operation. Other conventional methods include depositing a rubber inner sleeve in the pipe. However, rubber inner sleeves have a tendency to collapse and may not be applied on all pipe configurations.